Alphabetic Principle is the 2nd essential pre-reading skill necessary to learn how to read. Basically, it is another way of saying phonics. If a child does not learn the correct sounds they will have more challenges with spelling correctly and reading. Pronunciation is often times where we get tripped up. It is easy to add vowel sounds to consonants. For instance, saying "ma" instead of "mmmm" like something tastes good is a common mistake. Children will start adding vowels that should not be in word when they start to spell if they do not hear crisp sounds while learning phonics. Watch out for adding a long /a/ sound to b,d,p,m,r, and so on.
How to Re-Engage an Uninterested Reader
How to Re-Engage an Uninterested Reader
It is vital that toddlers and preschoolers have a happy relationship with reading. The more positive experiences children have with books before they are reading themselves, the more motivated they will be to do it on their own. If you have found your child has lost interest in books, or never seemed interested in the first place, try these seven reading development strategies to reinvigorate their love of books.
1. Sing Books Instead of “Reading”
Sometimes children become bored or disinterested in books and I have found that singing the words in a books always brings their attention back. Not only is it fun and a way they can “read” the book too, but there are also literary benefits such as developing phonemic and phonological awareness. Many children’s songs have been turned into books, and many books have a rolling rhythm that can be sung. Songs can be a form of storytelling, and oral language and sounds is a precursor to written language.
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2. Choose books with Movements
Young children often have a hard time sitting still to listen to a book. I good way to solve this problem is to choose books with movements. This allows them to move their bodies so they can focus their attention on the story and not use all their concentration on keeping their body still. Movement in books also gives the story context and gives the story life for the child. If the book uses repetition in movements, the children will learn where they can participate in the parts of the book that use the movements. During my Montessori training, my teacher Mary Ellen Maunz, the founder of Age of Montessori, read a book that perfectly executes movements and repetition. The book is called “Something From Nothing” by Phoebe Gilman.
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3. Choose books with Rhymes, Rhythms and Repetitions
Rhymes, rhythms, and repetitions are just plain fun and attention grabbing, and again, they develop phonemic and phonological awareness. Repetition gives the child an opportunity to develop forward thinking and anticipation for the parts of the book that use repeated phrases.
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4. Read with Different Paces and Inflections
Children love it when you speed up or slow down your usual reading pace. Dr. Seuss books are great for doing this. Sometimes I will read the book as fast as I can, and on occasion I will stop to make a dramatic pause. During the dramatic pause I will take a ridiculous deep breath to indicate I’m about to say something hard, and then continue reading fast as I can. Kids love this! Other times I will read slowly putting emphasis on every word as if there is a period behind it. Another silly way to make reading fun is to read books with different inflections to show a child that tone can change the meaning of words. This is also a good emotional awareness tool. Is the tone happy, angry, silly, or sad?
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5. Have a special place for books & Show how to respectfully use a book
Books should be an everyday part of life, but if our attitude about how we allow books to be treated is too casual, children may fail to recognize how special books are and how they should be respected. Therefore, have guidelines around how to use books. Start by showing children how to open and close a book. Next, show them how to turn the pages without ripping or wrinkling them. Choose a special place for your books to live and create excitement around going to that special place when you want to read a book. Make a point of walking the book back to its special home and remind your child books should not be left on the floor.
6. Read books you can act out or morph into Imaginary Play
Have you ever wanted a book to come to life? I started asking my class: What book would you want to live in? And I loved getting their answers. Good books spark the imagination and you can create interest around a book by asking your child to act out a scene from the story or ask your child what character they would like to be. Often just asking a few questions can prompt your child into imaginary play all on their own.
7. Read books on a topic and then go on a Field Trip or do an Activity
Connect books to real life by going on a field trip or doing a related activity. For example, you could start by going to the library to find books on apples. After learning facts about different types of apples, the parts of an apple, apple orchards, Johnny AppleSeed, etc you could go on a field trip to an apple orchard. Apples are a topic that has many hands on activities associated with it. You could make an apple pie or applesauce at home. You could pick different varieties of apples from the orchard and do an apple tasting to rate the different textures, sweetness, tartness, color, and so on. There are so many interesting ways to bring excitement to a topic. This can be done as often as you want or once a quarter to follow the seasons.
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Pre-Reading Skills: What You Need To Know To Teach Your Child to Read
I have been advertising myself as a preschool reading tutor, and not surprisingly I am not getting many people who understand why a preschool reading tutor is necessary. There is a big movement to let kids be little, and misconstrued research floating through the Facebook sphere saying that it makes no difference when children learn to read. I could not disagree more. I am sure that all of these people have good intentions and are doing what they think is best for their children. So in the name of doing what’s best for our children, and still letting them be little, I would like to introduce some developmental reading concepts that most people are probably unaware of and why it is important to learn in preschool.
Pre-Reading Skills: Best developed between 3-5 years old
In layman's terms, Phonemic Awareness is helping children learn to identify the sounds they hear through speech. This is best done by singling out the first or last sound of a word. For instance, saying /c/ cat or box /x/. Phonemic awareness is the first step towards reading and is best started around 3 years old. This skill can easily be developed through your day with little effort. Simply saying “Do you want to go to the /p/ park” or “Time to get into the /c/ car” starts to bring awareness that words are made up of sounds.
The second pre-reading skill is called Blending. I teach blending using little figures that I know children love to touch and play with. For example, I have a miniature: hat, mop, pig, dog, pan, bus, sun, bed, and so on. I will line up the figures and point to one and say “This is a /d/o/g/ dog” and go through the whole line that way. After doing this a few times I will ask them “Can you show me the /b/u/s/ please? The child in order to point to the right figurine needs to blend the sounds together to understand the word. If they are having a tough time doing this I say the sounds quickly so the word is more obvious. To make it harder the sounds are said slower with more of a pause in between. When children can blend words easily they are ready for the next step, which is segmenting.
For this lesson the labels would not be used.
It is easiest to think of segmenting as the opposite of blending. Segmenting is taking a word and pulling the sounds a part, whereas blending is putting the sounds together. (I would like to clarify that at this point letters are still not being used). Using the same figurines as before put an item on a piece of paper that has spaces indicating how many sounds there are in a word. For example, “cat” has three letters so I would have 3 blank spaces on the paper. To show the child what to do you would do the lesson a few times putting your finger on each space as you say /c/a/t/. This lesson is direct preparation for reading because it is teaching them to sound out a word.
The next skill comes easily if the previous three have been practiced for a while. It is called Alphabetic Principle. Most people understand this skill but it is important to point out common mistakes. Alphabetic principle is teaching that each letter in the alphabet has a sound. This is where most people start in the process of reading but if a child’s hearing/brain connection has not been trained to hear individual sounds a child will have a difficult time correctly remembering and identifying a letter with a sound.
What makes this process even more difficult is that most people teach the letter names instead of, or before, the letter sounds. This sets children up for failure because they do not know in what situation to use the sound and in what situation to use the letter name. The letter names are not used to read! And so it is best to teach children to recognize letters by their sound. When introducing a letter to a child you should show them the letter and say “This is /a/. Can you think of a word that starts with the /a/ sound?”. If they can’t, you give examples like: apple, ax, alligator, and so on.
There are many more steps to the road of reading but these four pre-reading skills are the foundation for reading. Without these skills learning to read is very difficult, which is why most people think that preschoolers are too young to read. This brings me to my last point, which is about sensitive periods. A sensitive period is a window of time in which a skill is learned best and with the least difficulty. Most of us recognize that milestones fall within a general time frame for infants and toddlers. These have been well established by the medical community. We know that the time frame for a baby to walk is generally between 9 months and 15 months. We do not expect a child to start walking at 3 years old because the sensitive period for walking is between 9 months and 15 months.
Reading has a sensitive period and it is between 3 years old and 6 years old. This does not mean I expect 3 year olds to read. There are many pre-reading skills and learning milestones that children need to accomplish before reading can take place. But if you start phonemic awareness at 5,6,7 years old you are at the end of the sensitive period and the window of opportunity for easy acquisition of the skill is closing with years worth of skills that still need to be mastered. Like most things, some children are more acclimated to reading while others need more help. Working on the pre-reading skills can help a child so much that they may never know that reading could have been a challenge for them.
Reading is not an instinct. It is not naturally acquired without instruction. So it is important that we provide the proper instruction at the proper time. In Montessori, we are trained to observe sensitive periods to respect the child’s inner world and not force them into a lesson they are not ready for. Forcing a reading lesson on a child who is not ready will not be fruitful for the learning process, and yet Montessorians have found time and again that we can guide preschoolers through the reading process because they are in a sensitive period. We also understand there is a developmental process to reading and rather than jumping to letters and words we start at the very beginning and work our way up.
I am a huge advocate of childhood play and learning through movement. These lessons done for five to ten minutes a day or just a few times a week can have a massive impact on your child’s reading development, which I do not believe takes away any childhood magic. If you strongly feel that preschoolers should not be learning to read please contact me. I would love to further discuss the topic. And if now you understand why I provide tutoring services for preschoolers and are interested in a session please send me a message. Happy reading!